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Ghislaine Maxwell Is Denied Bail by Judge Who Calls Her a Flight Risk
The longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein has been charged with helping him recruit, groom and ultimately sexually abuse girls as young as 14.
By Nicole Hong and
Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein who has been charged with helping him recruit, groom and ultimately sexually abuse girls as young as 14, was denied bail on Tuesday by a judge who said she posed a high risk of fleeing before her trial.
The judge, Alison J. Nathan of Federal District Court, said Ms. Maxwell had demonstrated a sophisticated ability to hide herself and obscure her financial resources.
“Ms. Maxwell poses a substantial actual risk of flight,” she said.
The hearing was unusual in that it was virtual. Ms. Maxwell, who is being held in a federal detention center in Brooklyn; her lawyer; the prosecutor; and the judge each appeared remotely from their locations on separate video screens streamed from a room at the courthouse, all part of special precautions being taken by the court because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Ms. Maxwell, 58, showed up on video from a room in the Brooklyn jail where she was being held, wearing a dark-colored shirt with her hair pulled back. Throughout the hearing, she responded politely to the judge’s questions and did not react visibly as the judge read her ruling.
During the hearing, Judge Nathan heard the words of two women who said they were victims of Ms. Maxwell and urged the judge not to release her before trial.
One of the women, Annie Farmer, called Ms. Maxwell “a sexual predator who groomed and abused me and countless other children and young women.” Ms. Farmer read her statement without showing herself on a video screen.
The prosecutor, Alison Moe, read aloud a statement from the other woman, who chose to remain anonymous and to be referred to as Jane Doe. In the statement, the woman said, “Without Ghislaine, Jeffrey could not have done what he did.”
A federal indictment has charged that from 1994 to 1997 Ms. Maxwell helped Mr. Epstein entice girls to engage in sexual abuse, and that, in some instances, she participated in the abuse. She is also accused of lying under oath in 2016 during depositions for a lawsuit about her knowledge of Mr. Epstein’s sexual activities.
Mr. Epstein dated Ms. Maxwell and paid her to manage his properties, according to prosecutors. In 2003, he described her in a Vanity Fair article as his best friend.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Ms. Maxwell pleaded not guilty to the six-count indictment against her; the charges include transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, conspiracy and perjury.
Ms. Maxwell’s lawyers had asked the judge to release their client into home confinement on a $5 million bond, but prosecutors objected, arguing that she posed an “extreme risk of flight” because of her international ties and significant financial resources.
The prosecutors said Ms. Maxwell, 58, had been seeking to evade law enforcement by hiding out in various locations in New England, most recently on a 156-acre property in Bradford, N.H., where she was arrested on July 2.
She had switched her email address, registered a new phone number under the name “G Max” and ordered packages under a different person’s name for the shipping label, according to a government court filing. A private security guard on her property told the F.B.I. that he was given a credit card to make purchases on her behalf.
On the day of her arrest, when federal agents breached her locked gate and showed up to the front door, she ignored their orders to open the door and fled to a different room, prosecutors said.
Ms. Maxwell’s lawyers argued that their client was not hiding from the authorities but from the news media. She has seen reporters hiding in her bushes, and some of her close friends had lost their jobs because of their association with her, according to her lawyers.
They said Ms. Maxwell, who had once been a fixture on New York’s social scene, had received death threats and had been forced to hire security guards. Last November, the lawyers said, The Sun, a British tabloid, offered a bounty of 10,000 British pounds for information about Ms. Maxwell’s location.
Ms. Maxwell’s arrest came almost exactly a year after Mr. Epstein was charged with sexually exploiting and abusing dozens of girls and women at his mansion in Manhattan, his estate in Palm Beach, Fla., and other sites.
That case was before a different federal judge in Manhattan, who denied bail to Mr. Epstein. Last August, Mr. Epstein, 66, hanged himself in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan, where he was being held pending trial.
At the time of his death, Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Epstein had not had any contact for more than a decade, according to her lawyers.
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